Your PR Architect

Last week, colleagues and former students encouraged me to write about the colossal PR blunders of April: Pepsi's misguided TV commercial in which a rich white woman ends a street protest by handing a cop a soft drink Press Secretary Sean Spicer's gross stupidity in using Hitler and the Holocaust in describing Syria's use of chemical warfare United Airlines' ghastly mishandling of "re-accommodating" a passenger on a commercial jet -- and bloodying both passenger and senior management in the process. These tragic blunders didn't need my commentary. News media pundits and late-night comedians carried the ball far across the goal line. They pointed out the universal tone-deafness of Pepsi, United, and Spicer. They didn't need me to spike the ball. Businesses and government officials have been saying dumb things for decades. There's nothing new about these errors. Each reflects an acute case of self-absorption, and a total disregard for ...

The most important tool to get usable PR photos isn't a $5,000 digital SLR camera. Or a camera phone. Or some in-between device, like a point-and-shoot digital camera. It's your brain. The thinking machine between your ears.  Yes, I can tell you about tiny imaging sensors that capture grainy, disappointing photos. Or how any bright light source you see on your smartphone's screen will trick the camera into under exposing the shot, making faces dark and unrecognizable. Or how that tiny flash won't light up anything further than six feet from your lens. But you won't care. Or won't remember. So, instead, let's talk about your brain, and how it ought to think about PR photos. It should ask three questions, well before you decide that photos of a PR event would be good to have: 1. How quickly does the world need to see these photos? 2. Where will these photos be used? 3. What message will the photos say about your brand? First, how q...